Swinter burst to the surface, gasping for air. The chilly air felt like knives stabbing, but he barely noticed.  Looking around, he could find no signs of land, and a new jolt of fear struck him. Exhausted from his watery escape, he layed floating in the currents.  As the night descended, Swinter opened his eyes and scanned his surroundings again, and the panic began to rise in his mind again. If he started to swim and went in the wrong direction….  Then he saw it, a tiny flicker on the darkening horizon.  Holding his breath and staring desperately out into the dark, and yes! He thought it was a light.  

 

Immediately, Swinter began the arduous task of swimming towards it.  Stabbing pains in his stomach reminded him that he was starving.  Even though he seemed to be immortal, he still had to eat.  Weak, he slowly approached the light as his strength depleted by his body cannibalized itself.   After a while, he was sure the light was getting bigger. He smiled, slowing to tread water.   The growing hope gave him an energy boost. Feeling a bit cocky at this point, Swinter said out loud, “I guess never getting to die has some advantages. Maybe I'll get used to this”. Fool,  you never shoot an albatross while at sea, and you do not say things to anger the Gods of the waters.  Just as he continued to swim, a sudden wrenching pain in his leg and everything went dark.  

 

Panic filled him as he very quickly realized he was becoming something’s lunch. Reaching down, he felt the pointy, smooth muzzle of what he guessed was a shark.  Feeling lower, his finger was sliced open on razor-sharp teeth. Grunting to himself. He tried to pull his leg out, but the damnable shark was too strong.   As the struggle continued, he began to feel lightheaded. The fear of dying and being at this beast's mercy was too much, and with a sudden surge of energy, she reached down and forced his hand through the beast's eye.  Reaching in deeper he tore and squished, anything he could,  till the monster finally died, letting him go. Too weak, he let the shark's body float him to the surface. 

 

For a long time, Swinter laid himself over the carcass.  But as he did, the stabbing pain in his stomach became too much.  With his teeth, he tore the grey skin till he could get his hands inside and rip out the shark's meat.  Overwhelmed with the life-giving food, he lost himself and ravenously ate.  Swinter had consumed most of the shark by the time he was sated.  Loudly belching, he floated on his back and stared up into the night sky.  The clear night allowed the stars to shine bright. Beautiful but sad Swinter gazed upon the moon.  Once a sphere, now 3 large chunks of rock.  The dust from the cataclysm glowed in the moonlight.  Sad the people of this world were forgetting, and new mythologies were born to explain its destruction.    

 

Snapped back to reality by a sudden sensation of falling, Swinter had enough time to look up to see him falling down a black hole no…, the throat of a massive beast!  The moonlight glittering off the massive sharp teeth, then perfect darkness as the beast closed its mouth.  It was a short fall as he plunged into the belly of the beast. Too stunned to do anything, he sat there in a profound, confused shock.  The vile smells of the beast's innard quickly forced him to get up.   Slowly, as his eyes adjusted, there was a strange glow in the air.  The cavity was surprisingly large.  Slowly walking through the dissolving masses of the beast's lunch. Holding his hands out, he felt the walls for what he didn't know, but he had to try something.   

 

Continuing to where the light seemed to be a bit brighter, what he had thought was a glowing parasite turned out to be some fibrous light. It was like a light bulb people used before the world had died. But not really, since it also seemed to grow out of the animal. Carefully, he grabbed it, and delicately as he could, he pulled on it till it broke off.  He held it up with a satisfied and disgusted smile; the glow remained.   Spending the next hour, Swinter found and took several more till he had a gooey glowing mass.  Holding it up, he gasped.   The walls and ceiling were some horrifying conglomerations of metal and flesh.  Swinter tried but could not see how they were connected or even where the metal had turned to flesh. “Abomination,” he whispered. He had heard of these in whispers of people in taverns.  But he had always assumed it was drunk fools because nothing could truly be this twisted, even in this new world.  

 

Stepping away, he forced himself to move on. The cool blue glow bled into a reddish glow. Making his way to the red light, he breathed a sigh of relief as he noticed a small ovular hatch door just below the light. Too tired and discouraged to worry about who or what lay beyond, he turned the wheel, and the hatch cracked open.  Putting his fingers in the crack and pulled, and the door budged a little.  Shaking his head, he grunted and pulled with all his remaining strength, and the hatch door slowly opened with a mind-killing screech. 

 

Peering through the gloom, it was quiet. Shivering at the temperature drop, Swindle made his way down the corridor. The Living ship was huge, and he estimated that he had spent a whole day exploring it without finding signs of life.  

 

Rubbing his head at his growing headache forced him to rest again. As the pain worsened, he couldn't stop the flashbacks from the day before.  Trapped at the bottom of the ocean, it had been bad.  For as many times as he had died, that was the worst.  He had never died so many times in such a short time.  The waking to consciousness only to immediately start drowning again was genuinely horrible. Hyperventilating and getting dizzy, he slid down the wall and put his hand to his face.  Had he not been able to break his binds, he would still be down there—the cold black depths with the pressure so intense like a vice.  Swinter couldn't move and was forced to lay there as waves of panic washed over him until he finally passed out.      

 

The panic attacks were getting stronger and more frequent. Slowly opening his eyes, he tried to pull himself up.  Panic gripped him as he tried to move but couldn't.  In his panic, he began to thrash around till, with a ripping pain, he got his arm off the floor.  Using his weight and free arm to throw his weight, he managed to get his other arm free.  Whatever he was stuck to, his shirt and pants had somewhat protected his body. With effort and pain, Swinter freed himself, jumping off the deck.  Picking up his goo ball of light, he shinned it down on where he lay.  Gasping, he could see the outline of decaying flesh from his body.  This ship had tried to consume him.   Turning his arm over, he could see the line where his flesh had been torn off him.  But he could heal, and his body was already responding.

 

 Backing away, he had to fight the overpowering sense of fear.  As he did so, the first sounds besides his beath and footsteps could be heard.  Over the next hour, the sound slowly grew more assertive, as did the biomechanical warping of the ship.  The Fleshy covering on the walls began to take on recognizable shapes.  An arm stuck from the wall as if grafted to it.  The fingers of its hand curled as if it had been holding onto something.   Holding up his light, a shiver ran up his spine as the owner of the arms face appeared on the wall.  A silent scream on the distorted face made it clear to Swinter that the man's absorption into the ship had not been a quick process. 

 

Rounding the bend, the answers to where the crew had gone had been answered.  He had seen many battlefields and deaths, but this shook him. Bodies fused to the walls and each other in some bloated horror.  Forcing himself forward, the body piles became more extensive and more dense. The smell of rot and decay was almost too much for him.  With only his little glow goo, he inched his way in. The sounds of the engine were practically deafening. Finally, out in the blackness, a faint amber light glowed.  At the end of the hall, Swinter turned left, and the engine room was at the end of the corridor.  

 

The Mass of biomechanical corpses became too much, and Swinter was forced to crawl over the bodies. Visera and gore seeping into his clothes and mouth.  He wanted to scream and run from here. But where could he go?  With tears in his eyes, he crawled the last 40 yards to the Hatch of the engineering room.  The Amber light glowed brightly now, and the ship's engines could be seen working harder than they could ever have been designed to do.   

 

Looking at the amber glow, he found his eyes would not hold the light. Like his eyes were magnetically repelled from it, it took all his concentration to examine it. Finally, like a spell breaking, it became clear.  And the glow came from the chest of the ship's Chief.  Wire and cables came out from him. The chief looked down at him through its milky eyes and smugly smiled; closing its eyes again, the ship's engines worked faster and faster. And the Chief's body began to grow. It took on a metallic sheen in places.  The glow in his chest became blinding, and Swinter could feel the heat rising inside it. 

 

It took time for the heat to kill a man, plus with Swinter’s added healing abilities, it took a while for Swinter to die as the heat of a mini sun was released from the Chief. He felt his skin and flesh burn away, and then nothing.  Swinter's eyes shot open after how long, who can say? He found himself alive again on a beach somewhere.  Standing on shaken legs, he looked at the ship's wreckage.  The top half was blasted and melted away, and the rest was in ruin.  A sharp pain in his chest brought his hand up.  Gasping at the crater where his chest used to be, he looked down. Where his organs used to be was a glowing amber crystal. Where his organs should have been was now just a mesh of wires growing out of the amber. 

 

He stood there for a long time, just staring down at it, till a fading voice in his mind said, “It's your turn to carry it awhile.